the text
december 04th, 2006
Thick summer haze thinned
the highway light.
But on clear nights
I’d read by it,
forgetting, or making
new ends to old stories.
Love contaminates
the smallest rooms wholly.
Its half-life is
a hair on a pillow,
a forgotten watch on a nightstand.
See, I’d made a home
on the river, ramshackle,
by the edge of the rain-
sick floodplain.
Its pressed wood
suspended, uncertainly
slept near the water.
For months that tin roof
kept my face dry,
the rough cedar struts
kept my heart off the earth.
Some evenings
the freight barge would wake me.
The swampfishers’ laughter
some mornings.